The discussion emphasizes a holistic "Brand, Demand, Expand" framework for sustainable business growth, arguing that while demand generation is crucial for short-term results, neglecting brand building and customer expansion leads to growth plateaus. True, long-term growth requires a balanced approach across all three pillars, with a particular focus on leveraging existing customers for expansion and advocacy.
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Welcome, welcome. Really excited for
this event. Um, I'm joined by a dear
friend and a badass and Gianna. I'm
super excited to get into the
conversation today. Um, we got lots of
people coming in, but we're going to get
started. Um and uh really the focus of
the uh the conversation today is um
talking more about um the brand demand
expand approach that I'm sure you've
been seeing all of Refined Labs talking
about this year. Um you know, and we're
not claiming we made it up. This is just
going back to like key marketing
fundamentals that are timeless and that
always work and especially as we're all
trying to do our best to uh kind of uh
manage through the AI era um some of
these timeless marketing principles um
are really where we should all be
thinking about in order to to drive
sustainable growth for our companies.
And so excited to talk through this
today. you you probably know from our
Refined Labs events and content, we are
heavily focused on talking about all
things demand and we've really been
leaning into more um uh content and um
events focused around brand strategy and
brand measurement. And I'm really
excited today because Gianna is really a
customer marketing expansion advocacy
expert. And so we're going to really um
talk a lot about that expand pillar and
how customer marketing and customer
advocacy is a is fuel for for your brand
and for actually closing deals and
getting deals over the finish line. And
so um we're going to get into it. So
Gianna, welcome. I've known you for
years. I'm so glad we're doing an event
together, but would love to kick it over
to you to just introduce yourself and
your your uh and champion.
>> Oh, thanks so much, Megan. Hey,
everyone. I'm Ganna. Everyone calls me
G, so feel like I have to say the same.
Feel free to call me G. Um I I met Megan
years ago back when I was a GM at
Airall. She graciously gave me some of
her time as I was uh really exploring
how to grow the customer success, right?
So talk about expand uh function of our
business and you know my lens has always
been looking at uh SDR BDR all the way
through customer success. So that full
go to market engine. Um prior to air
call I had been at a company called Blue
Wolf and Mondo where I helped scale it
um as part of and running the RevOps
team. And so that's really the lens in
which I view things. But today I'm I'm
coming to you as a co-founder of
Champion. Um we're a customer marketing
platform where we help our enterprise
customers grow through their customer
base. So really thinking about how do
you use your customers as a channel? uh
and this has been a lot of fun because I
bring a lot of the fundamentals uh that
uh I've experienced through building um
go to market engines and and now this is
really that that layer in that piece
where you could add in advocacy all
across that customer journey as you know
every organization is really trying to
find that path to efficiency and and
profitability and I think customers are
the key to it but that's no secret.
>> Awesome. Yes. And for those of you that
know my background, I kind of grew up in
the world of customer success. And so,
um, I love when customer success and
marketing can collide. And I think more
than ever, it's, um, such a powerful
growth lever that honestly, I think most businesses,
businesses,
um, haven't really prioritized to date.
And so the good thing about that is it's
a real tangible opportunity um to think
about how you're leveraging your
customers as part of your growth engine.
Um and this is of course you know in
addition to delivering for your
customers and you know meeting your
brand promise and driving results for
them. That's table stakes of course. Um,
but there are all of these uh
considerations for uh how you can use
your customers to fuel new business
growth and also expansion within your
current customer base as well. And so um
we're let's jump in. We'll kind of
tackle each pillar and uh we'll start
with brand. We we'll just jump right in.
And so, you know, we've been talking a
lot more about this. Our, you know, our
roots at Refine Labs have um, you know,
were originally really rooted in demand
genen and that is was our real core
competency and what we had focused on.
And what we're finding is that if you
have too much tunnel vision on a
demandonly strategy that you will hit a
growth plateau that you will start to
see diminishing returns and that the two
additional pillars that are really
required um to continue to grow a
business is is brand and expand. And so
from a brand perspective, um, obviously
there's things that you can do, you
know, from a paid advertising
perspective to build brand awareness,
but there's so many other programs that
you need to be thinking about and
implementing for a true holistic brand
strategy. And, you know, we we all know
the stats, right? Like we all know that
most B2B buyers have essentially a day
one consideration set when they're
starting a buying process. they already
know a set of brands that they're
probably going to buy from and if you're
not on that day one consideration set
list, it's very likely you're not going
to, you know, win the deal. And so, uh,
it's a missed opportunity for a lot of
folks that are, um, too focused on
performance marketing or demand genen at
the expense of a more holistic strategy.
Um, and we just know that, you know, I
think it's like 90% of purchases will be
from that day one list. So, of course,
there are ways to get in and people
might find you via search or other
means. Um, but prioritizing this is
really, really key. Um,
>> it's a short list these days too from
what I read and I can't remember the
exact study but I think it was something
like uh today's consumer is looking at
two to three products as opposed to
traditionally that five to six. So it's
also a short list that you need to get
into. So it's a double whammy there.
>> Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we've
had a lot of really great sessions
recently with Matt Chanella and Dale
Harrison. And it's fascinating when you
really dive deep into brand how people
believe that one program or one
activation is enough and that the like
the memory decay of one particular brand
program is so rapid that this always on
brand motion is really required. And so
um you know from my perspective when you
think about a brand strategy priority
number one is your unique point of view
and your strategic narrative. You know
what are what is your story right? What
story are you telling to the market that
is going to make them understand the
problem that you solve your solution and
have a recall of and you know sort of
association of your brand with that
problem and solution. Um getting that
story right making it compelling is much
harder than I think people give it
credit for. And so that is a key input
in order for any brand program to be
successful. Um
>> yeah, you know, it's interesting having,
you know, we're two years into Champion
now and well about two and a half and
you know, I'd always been at a scale up,
right? And so it was so interesting to
build from the ground up and really to
build that brand from its infancy and
thankfully uh my co-founder Jeff Rickers
is a brilliant marketer and so he really
took the reigns here. Uh but it was
really fascinating to watch how
important it was to survey, right? Speak
to thousands of customer marketers. Of
course, that was the space that we were
selling into to help us understand what
those problems were to use their words
within our branding, within our
messaging, that narrative that you speak
of so that we really could show and
explicitly be aligned to right those
problems that we were solving as we're
creating a little bit of a new space.
There are a lot of players in customer
marketing but um it's still not a major
strategic program in the eyes of the
seauite and that's where Jeff and I are
really trying to change that narrative
alongside our customers to say look at
how much impact you can make and do make
as a customer marketer and that's really
that narrative Megan that you eloquently
said is so hard to do sometimes right to
to to really create that wave. Yeah,
absolutely. I'd love to dig into this
more. Um, in terms of from your
perspective, what are some of the brand
programs that you have activated to get
your story out into the market? What's
been successful for you guys so far to date?
date?
>> Yeah, so um, definitely, you know,
social obviously, you know, having a
presence on social and really being
thoughtful about the content. Um, but we
wholeheartedly believe that business is
human and we are trying to make the
buying cycle human again. And to do
that, that means that we're sharing
human stories, human struggle, human
successes. And so, we're really bringing
our customers to the forefront of this
story. So, whether that's them helping
us really create um the narrative and
understand the pain points, it's also
really amplifying their voice and what
they've done. So one social and util
utilizing our customers actual voice
stories etc for that win. Um but then it
was it's also um creating events. So we
did a whole series of events. So we
partnered with another company doing
roundts and giving again the platform
for our prospects, our customers, our
main ICP to really create a beautiful
environment so that they can share what
they're going through. So we're just
like the platform, right? The the medium
for them to get together, but that in
turn builds a brand to show that we are
invested in them. And that's part of our
core value is really showing this
community that we're a part of wanting
to help them rise um and getting more
seuite visibility. And to do that, it's
about elevating each other. Now that
we're kind of past the COVID era um I
think we're all noticing and seeing
either as you know observers or
participants or hosts in-person events
are so powerful. Small dinners um are
are great ways to engage with your
audience. Um, and community and and
community can mean a lot of different
things, right? It doesn't always
necessarily need to be a Slack
community, but that can absolutely help.
It's like how are you bringing, you
know, your uh your perspective customers
and your customers together so that they
can share and learn. Um, Donna, I love
your question in the chat around um
customer interviewing. And when Gianna
gets back on, uh, we'll definitely get
her her take on this. I think one thing
that we've been testing out at Refine
Labs in relation to customer
interviewing is we've been um we've been
leveraging the winter software platform
for some really interesting brand
sentiment surveys as well as buyer
research. And we have been finding that
actually having some customer um
interviews that are really focused on
the buying process specifically has been
really eyeopening about what they
actually care about um and kind of
piecing together like the murky customer
journey that we know people kind of go
through today. And so I'll be really um
interested in uh hearing GO's
perspective on on what they did for for
their customers. Don, I'm seeing your response.
response. Um
Um
yeah, and I think what we have noticed
is we have been leveraging both
technology for some kind of surveying a
as well as getting in front of actual
people. And I hear you, Donna. It's
expensive from, you know, both a time
and resource perspective, but the
insights um are so valuable. And the
reality is, you know, we've been doing
these in, you know, cohorts of 10 or 15.
You don't necessarily need hundreds or
thousands to get really valuable and
interesting insights. And um Donna was
actually really interested to hear more
about how you did the customer
interviewing that you mentioned for um
you know big groups of people and she
she's interested to hear a little bit
more uh about that. I was sharing a
little bit about some of the buyer
committee research projects we've been
running at Refine Labs but those are on
a very small scale very focused on how
people buy but share your experience uh
with what you've done with customer surveys.
surveys.
>> Absolutely. Um, so we actually, um, did
these live, uh, or one-on-one via Zoom.
Um, and so, well, I should say that
there were different parts of it. Um,
how we really got started was booking
time and and asking, uh, for people's
time. So, whether it's your customer
base that you're doing this with or, uh,
as we were entering the market building
a product, it was really, you know, no
lies about, you know, what the intent
was, which was really asking for
people's time to help us. And I think
that that's really important to
explicitly um share um and that you're
not trying to sell them um but you are
asking for their time. And so you know
we did one-on-one meetings with people
30 minute time slots if if they could a
lot 30 minutes with you know just very
specific questions to learn about their
pain points. So, you know, if you are exploring
exploring
um wanting to solicit feedback from
others, I would say, you know, really
understand what it is you are trying to
gather and create a framework that you
could use and replicate with many. And
so, we did that for one-on-one
conversations. We also threw some
events. So we did some like happy hour
style events where we gave a very brief
presentation to tease an idea and then
within that idea we were then able to
walk around the room, solicit feedback,
book some follow-ups that way, which was
a great way to go deeper into a
conversation. From a survey perspective,
there are great tools out there that you
can use um to again, you know,
formulate, you know, some bigger, you
know, um responses from from a larger
sample size. Uh and so again I think it
always boils down to really thinking
about what outcome you are looking for,
what type of information you are looking
for and then create your framework of
questions from there where you could
really extract thematically
um you know the the different responses
uh to drive change.
>> Yeah, awesome answer. I love it. I love
it. Um I mean we could go on and on and
on about brand, but let's move on to the
next pillar and dive a little bit into
the demand pillar. I'll speak to this a
little and then we'll we'll love to get
your take Giana especially from you know
customer marketing and a customer
advocacy perspective. I think this is
another area that I think can be so
underutilized or underleveraged. Um and
so you know when we think about the
brand demand expand pillar um the goal
of brand is really um being on that day
one consideration set like that's really
the goal that you're after. From a
demand perspective, we uh are looking at
that in how do we convert interest and
attention into sales conversations and
pipeline. And this is where you get a
lot of what I would say is probably, you
know, the the stuff that's become really
the go-to in terms of growth strategies
over the last five years is how are we
thinking about performance marketing?
How are we thinking about our website?
How are we thinking about uh people
converting off the website? How are we
educating and activating our buyers? Um
how do we make sure if they're searching
for us somewhere that we are coming up
in that search so that we can be part of
the process? How are we making that
experience as frictionless as possible?
Um, and what I like to say is usually
from a when you're looking at all of
these pillars, the demand pillar is
probably the easiest thing to spend the
most money on. And so I think you have
people um honestly overinvesting in this
pillar because it feels coin operated.
I'm going to put some money in. I'm
going to get some customers out. It's
easier to defend with your CFO. Um, it's
easier, you know, in some ways to
measure success and to track. We're not
going to get into an attribution
conversation today. Um, but the the the
key here is this is a critical pillar,
right? Like this is how you drive short
and medium-term results for your
business and it's critically important,
but should not be over prioritized
relative to the other pillars if you're
really looking to build a sustainable
growth engine. Um, something I'm really
interested in from your perspective, G,
is um, and things that I wasn't
necessarily automatically connecting to
customer marketing, but you know, you
guys talk a lot about how you can, um,
facilitate, you know, references or
referrals, and so would love to you to
to expand on your perspective there
because I do think that is again like
something that's underutilized, which
um, you know, for all of us could be an
opportunity that we haven't capitalized
on yet. Yeah, for sure. I think you
nailed it, right? What what is not
mentioned often in demand is how do you
use your customers to facilitate growth
within this segment? How do you
facilitate customers to increase your
win rates, decrease time to close,
right? Um, references is a great way to
do that. So, something that we're doing
at Champion is thinking about how do we
use AI to pair your best prospect,
right, with your best customer. Uh, it's
smart matching. And why I bring this up
is not just to say hey look how awesome
we are at Champion because we are but
it's to say how are you thinking about
what that pairing looks like because um
not any customer looks exactly the same
and so you want to have as
contextualized as a conversation as
possible. You really want going back to
the pain, right? Understanding what that
prospect, why haven't they said yes yet,
right? Understanding what their
objection is and then finding that
customer that had that same problem they
worked through. That's going to be the
best conversation. So, utilizing AI to
be able to pair that is what will
actually tick the needle into um ticking
that needle for revenue, right? And then
it also facilitates sales having more
time to focus on all of the other
things. So it can expedite the sales
process as well. Also, what we don't
think about with references is the
psychological benefit that it gives to
the customer. They get to share how much
they love you. Think about when you do
that when you're just talking about a
restaurant that you went to or that new
product you just tried. It brings joy
and so it it evokes that emotion again.
So, in a way, a customer serving as a
reference also helps with expand because
they're reminded of how much benefit and
value they've gotten from you because
they get to talk about it time and time
again. Hopefully, you're not overusing
and abusing them though on the reference
side. Um, you also asked Megan about
referrals. Um, this again is a really
great way to utilize your customer base.
I actually put this in place back when I
ran revops for a tech services company
and tech services um we grew it from 5
million to 100 million when we had our
exit and you know you you think about
what tech services is great at it is
network and relationship driven sales
right it's all about growing through the
customer base and that was something
that I was really surprised when I moved
over to product side that it's not as
mature right of really understanding how
customers how to utilize their network
and this is where I believe that
referral play comes in. So when I was at
this tech services company we realized
we were amazing hunters. We had grown to
about 30 million and then kind of were
lulled there and we realized we needed
to like crack the code on expansion,
crack the code on going wide as we
called it. And so what we did was we
trained every sales rep to just ask
their customers, hey would anyone else
in your network benefit from our
services? could you introduce me? And
that was incredibly powerful for sales
reps to really start the engine on a
referral introduction basis. And so now
think about taking that back on the
product side. That really is a form of
advocacy. Where along that customer
journey is it applicable and the right
time to ask your um buyer, your customer
for that referral. I did that at
Champion. I just closed a deal. Um she's
awesome. Saddaf, thank you. And I asked
her, "Hey, would anyone else like, you
know, benefit? You're out there. You're
in the community." And she introduced me
to um one of the my most favorite
clients right now, two-year contract,
closed it within like a three-month time
frame. Um one of the most recognizable
brands that my mother actually knows.
So, um really exciting that, you know,
when you ask in that right moment, um
you know, it it varies. You could I
asked them right at close and it was a
great time to do it. So just think about
that breath of network that you could
create there. Um lastly, what I'll say
is it also gives an opportunity for your
customers to build their brand as well.
Um it shows their network that they are
thought leaders and that um they have
suggestions and and value to bring
outside of um you know just what they're
doing within their organization as well.
>> Yeah, absolutely. I think one of my
biggest takeaways is, you know, even
myself, if I'm being honest, in terms of
references or referrals, I would say um
it's definitely more of a reactive
motion versus a proactive motion. I'm in
a sales process, someone asks asks for a
reference, and then I'm kind of
scrambling to like find the right
customer to connect them with. Um
referrals happen, you know, randomly and
spontaneously, but I don't necessarily
have an intentional strategy behind
that. And so, um, I think a huge
takeaway from everything that you just
covered is if you actually have an
intentional, proactive strategy for
references and referrals, it is a
massive unlock in terms of not only
potential new business growth, but also
customer happiness, retention, and
expansion of those customers as well.
So, I love that. I love that.
>> One other um motion that we didn't talk
about are job changes, right? like that
full flywheel of your customers. So,
thinking about you've got a customer who
has moved on to um another organization,
are you following them there? Because
that's a great way to generate warm leads
leads
>> 100%. And again, it's like you sort of
have a pulse on that or you hope that
they call you when they're in seat at
their new company, but having that
intentional strategy is is key to to to
be successful there.
>> Um we have another question in the chat.
So before we segue into the expand
pillar, um, and Duke, I see I see you
are your video is on. Can let's bring
you on. Steph, I don't know if you can
unmute. Duke, why don't you ask your
question live and we can chat about it.
>> Sounds good. Thank you. So I posted the
question of what's the right way to
measure and track how strong your brand
is knowing that it's the foundational
point of demand and expand. I then went
through and read some of the blog posts
Evan had sent over and what I took from
especially the brand one is it seems
like to me is a unique point of view and
then content. Are those the two most
important components from your
perspective? Um yeah and I think uh I I
noticed your question was very specific
around measurement and sort of tracking
and so I think from a brand program
perspective I think a core input is like
a clear ICP definition and a strong
strategic narrative or POV and then you
need to activate those right and so you
can activate that through content
through organic social thought
leadership through events through
community and those are probably the big
pillars in which you want to get in
front of your audience and find
different ways to communicate your
narrative in those programs in order to
build your brand, right? And build that
that recall um being, you know, being
part of that day one consideration set
from a measurement standpoint. Um we've
been looking at a few things um for
brand specifically. And so a really interesting
interesting
um uh metric to look at is share of
search. Um now looking at this requires
that you look at it over a pretty you
know long long span of time. And what
you want to actually start to measure is
what is the baseline of our current
share of search. So thinking through
this is you're going to have a set of
competitors in your market and people
are going to go to Google and we'll will
search specific brands. And so when you
actually aggregate all of the players in
your space, what percentage of that
>> sort of branded search is your company
getting relative to your competitors?
And so there's a way for you to get kind
of like a baseline. um often there's
pretty high correlation of share of
search to um to market share overall,
right? There are other factors that go
into market share, but there's some
interesting correlations there. Once you
have your baseline and understand how
you're performing relative to your
competitors, then that's when you can
begin to implement more focused brand
programs and then measure the change of
your share of search over time. I
typically would recommend looking at
this quarterly but really anchoring on
every six months to understand um how
you've improved that overall metric. And
I mean really what that is saying is are
the percentage of people that know your
brand and putting your brand into Google
increasing over time? And if so, you can
argue that your brand programs are being
successful. Now within each of the
programs there are obviously different
ways you can measure you know the
success of events and and your content
strategy etc. But I would think at at a
high level that that's critical and then
taking a step back you could argue that
your brand marketing has an entire halo
effect over the whole business. Mhm.
>> So, businesses that are growing at a
healthy clip year-over-year, that have,
you know, healthy margins, um, are are
always definitely running brand programs
and and you can argue that overall
business growth is a function of
effective brand. Obviously, sales is an
input. Obviously, you know, every team
has their role in that. Um, but that's
how I would think about measuring brand.
very distinct from if you're looking at,
you know, demand genen programs in terms
of paid, then you can get much more
granular at the program level of how
you're measuring success. But you need
to have a longer term mindset. I think
the other the last thing that I'll say
is um we've been testing um some of the
brand sentiment surveys via winter and
that's really interesting to get kind of
primary research on um essentially if
you are in the day one consideration set
with your target ICP and then running
those surveys every 6 to 12 months to
see if you are noticing an improvement
there as well. So that's another
concrete measurement that you can be
thinking about um uh from that
measurement perspective. So I kind of I
gave you a lot there. Any any feedback
or follow-up questions?
>> No, that all makes sense. Um and again,
I'm just going back to some of the
previous events your team's done with
Dale Harrison of again just talking
about okay companies trying to invest so
much more in the demand when they
haven't even done enough on the brand to
truly capitalize on both of that. So
that's why I'm wanting to just make sure
I'm starting from the perspective of
understanding that the brand needs to be
something that sets the tone for
everything else after.
>> Exactly. And that's why we've been
really championing this um you know kind
of brand demand expand framework because
you really need all three
>> and you need to be thinking about all
three within the context of building a
growth system and kind of get out of the
weeds of executing programs or
campaigns. And that's I think really the
difference between great companies that
are growing and profitable and the ones
that are not. >> Great.
>> Great. >> Um,
>> Um,
>> thank you.
>> Yeah, thanks for coming on, Duke. I
appreciate it.
Um, all right. So, we've talked about
brand and demand. I love the questions.
Keep them coming. Um, let's uh let's
touch a little bit more on the expand
pillar. We've been talking about a
little bit of that throughout, but I
think there's um there's several aspects
to this. And I think, you know, from
from a practical like digital marketing
perspective, there's also um some kind
of lowhanging fruit in my opinion in
terms of what we can be thinking about
in terms of bolstering our demand
strategies. And so, you know, these are
things that we've been doing for a long
time, but how are you putting out
customer case studies and social proof
and testimonials,
um, you know, as part of your paid
advertising mix? Um especially for
companies uh that you know are 500
million to a billion in revenue that
have tens and thousands um or hundreds
of thousands of customers, there are
meaningful ways for you to actually
market to your current customer base
because typically at that scale you have
multiple products and services that they
can take advantage of where most
customers are only using one or two of
them. And so there are some um you know
kind of table stakes programs that a lot
of people don't consider when they're
defining their demand or their paid
strategy um that can be really impactful
to integrate um both in directly
marketing to your customers but also
taking you know customer wins and case
studies and marketing them to
prospective customers as well. Um
there's so much more though when we
think about the expand pillar. What this
is really intended to represent is
retaining your customers, expanding your
customers, renewing your customers,
turning your customers into evangelists
and advocates. That's how businesses
will really continue to grow and scale.
And that that needs to be part of your
go-to market strategy. this these are
not things that are only relegated to
the customer success or customer support
team that it's actually a growth motion
and I think a lot of people don't view
it in that way so it doesn't get the
relative investment or priority that it
should and I think it's just because
people are not necessarily connecting
the dots of the impact that it could
have and I know you have probably like a
million things to say about this G so
I'll pass it over to you
>> yeah I think you know like theoretically
speaking I think where a lot companies
get it wrong as they mistake. Is the
customer happy versus is the customer
succeeding? And this is where I think
the focus really needs to land. Is the,
you know, is the customer succeeding on
your platform? Are they getting the
value right, the perceived value? And
it's constantly readressing this
endpoint. So it's thinking about arming
your you know customer success reps
making sure that you know they do a
business alignment understand what that
you know end result should be for that
client and it's constantly evolving and
so it really is a strategic partner in
ensuring that you're aligned with you
know the outcome that they're looking
for. Um there are so many different um
things that I want to say here that you
mentioned you know from um I'll share an
example um something that that is a
little off cuff that you wouldn't think
about. We talked about um references
right in that in that you know um kind
of demand portion of helping to convert
pipeline to one deals. Think about doing
the same for your customers. Megan, you
talked about expanding expanding
multi-product, right? Why not pair a
customer with a customer, right? And
really facilitate that growth pattern
that you can create and recognizing how
some of your strongest multi-product
customers got to that evolution, right?
And create that journey for your other
customers. So, um, one is just that
thematic identification, um, of that
customer journey and then pairing them
with the right customer at the right
time for that conversation.
Yeah, I love that. And I think, um, I'd
love to I feel like we've touched on
this throughout, but I know that um,
advocacy is something that you you talk
about a lot. I was going to say
Talk about getting a great brand name, right?
right?
>> I know. Exactly. Very fitting. Very
fitting. Um but uh I think the I think
uh I'd love for you to speak more about
that because I think um there's you know
and I think right now there's a kind of
a trend in B2B marketing around you know
influencers and how they can be um you
know essentially marketing your product
or influencing purchase decisions. But I
think an advocate is very distinct from
an influencer and maybe you know maybe
there's some overlap there of course in
some instances but how would you define
that and how you know how would you
describe the importance of that overall?
Yeah, I mean agreed in that like a word
is just a word and it's really how we
define it and and really what the
meaning that we want to extract from it,
the purpose, right? Um I think B TOC has
done an amazing job of of having
influencers and really from utilizing
that growth pattern and B2B is starting
to adopt that same principle and
practice in addition to right your loyal
advocates. When I think about the
difference between an influencer verse
an advocate, um an influencer is has a
brand, right? Their own brand and it's
utilizing their voice and their platform
to say, "Hey, I love this thing." I
think that hopefully it's done in a way
where um they really do love your
product, right? But
>> authentic and genuine.
>> Exactly. However, I think we've all seen
it. We all get that little cringe in
that like is it right? verse an
advocate. Um, an advocate is your
customer base that is deriving extreme
value from your product. They
intrinsically want to help you. So, if
you think about an influencer, you more
than likely will have to pay. It is a
one to many verse creating a many to
one. Create many advocates who are going
to have onetoone very meaningful
conversations over and over and over and
over again. And this is what will really
help you create um a flywheel effect of
your customers really being that word of
mouth for you, building your brand,
helping you drive demand, and then also
expanding. Now, I know that we're in the
expand section, but you can't talk about
advocacy without talking about the
influence across all three of these
pillars. Um you know, and you know,
really kind of diving into, you know,
the expand portion of it. Um, when you
build advocates, again, it's really
driving this extreme value. And so then
it's thinking about how do you partner
with them to better understand the
business needs, those growth potentials,
the expansion potential. And that's
really when you could go from a one-year
contract to a three-year contract or
start to push those boundaries, having
more and more transparent conversations.
So I think you could think of your
advocates as your partners in your
growth strategy within that core
account. thinking about it from
multi-product to then also thinking
about just a better contract um adding
in case studies utilizing you know their
their story right to then help you in
the other pillars as well.
>> Yeah 100% well said. Um so I think one
interesting topic related to all these
three pillars that I wanted to touch on
and then we'll open it up for some more Q&A
Q&A
um is budgeting and budget allocation.
So, we're in we're in budgeting season
right now. Everybody is putting together
2026 plans and 2026 budgets. I think the typical
typical
um you know the typical themes that we
see as we're working with customers and
we're um understanding how they're
currently deploying their go to market
budget. What we typically find and again
this is not everyone but this is sort of
general general conclusions is we
typically see demand is overfunded um
brand is underfunded and there's no real
proactive consideration around the
expand pillar. So that seems to be kind
of the predominant theme across a lot of
companies that we work with. And a lot
of people will ask like well how much
should we spend you know per pillar or
per channel or per pro per program? And
so, you know, I think there's no perfect
ratio. Every business is going to be
different. But I think that as a general
rule, we've been anchoring on um, you
know, the reality is, you know, growing
today and tomorrow and next week is
going to continue to be super critical
for every business. And so, you know, 50
to 60% of your budget maybe is allocated
to demand programs. That's really
anchored on those shorter and
medium-term results. Um but that you
know then hopefully 20 to 30% is
invested in various brand programs and
like let's get expand to the table at
least and allocate 10 to 20% of your
overall go to market motion. And again
these are intended to be ranges to
provide kind of a baseline for people to
just be thinking about their own budget
and first asking the question of like
how are we allocating things today? Are
there things that we're just totally
ignoring or not taking advantage of that
um are going to impact our ability to
grow in the medium and the long term and
should we be thinking about making some
changes? Um I would imagine you kind of
mentioned this earlier on in our talk,
Gianna, that um sometimes there's no
like budget line item at all for
customer marketing or various programs
related to customer marketing. And so
I'm sure you have a lot to say on this
topic too, but what's what's your POV on
sort of budgeting and how companies need
to be thinking about this?
>> Yeah, I I think that this is a CRO
conversation. It needs to be customer
marketing is a core function of making
sure that new gotom market motion runs.
And why I say that is because everyone
is really tasked with growing more
efficiently these days. And the way to
do that is to focus on NRR. That means
that you must focus on your retention
and your expansion of your customers. It
means that you have to have acute focus
on your ICP so that you're not wasting
dollars uh on brand or demand marketing
to the wrong people. How you continue to
invest in the right areas and understand
your ICP by understanding your
customers. making sure that you invest
in a cab so that you understand how
they're evolving. Therefore, your
product or your service evolves with
them as well. This is what's going to
ensure that your road map is always
representative of the evolving needs of
your ICP. So, in my mind, I would flip
it and say expand really like your
customers is where you need to invest
in. And we're starting to see that
customer marketing has more and more
influence within this conversation
because there are now tools like
Champion where you can really tie your
efforts to ROI showing the revenue
impact and that of course is what a CRO
needs to see but really thinking about
um how your customers are that
centralized kind of engine to the bigger engine.
engine.
>> Yeah, I love that. And as kind of a a
customer success professional at heart,
I spent the bulk of my career really in
that discipline, I you know, I couldn't
agree more. I think um and uh love that
you kind of are going at it from the CRO
angle. I think that's really smart and
that makes a lot of sense in terms of
who are the right folks at, you know, on
the C team that are going to have, you
know, budget authority and influence
over these types of decisions. Um,
Um,
>> yeah, because you think about customer
marketing, they're really influencing
the the full scope of the customer
journey, right? Everything from, you
know, brand and and utilizing the
customer voice to build that brand to
demand some of the different practices
that we mentioned of references,
referrals, tracking job changes to then
expand motions as well, creating
advocates, understanding who they are,
and giving them a platform of influence.
>> Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. Um,
let's open it up for questions. Um, we
have about 10 minutes left, so we can
take a few questions and do a few
closing thoughts. Um, oh, Duke had a
very direct question for you, G, in the
in the chat.
>> Um, are you reading it?
>> I have not read it yet. Uh, >> oh.
>> oh.
>> Um, he was asking, there's no pricing on
the Champion website. Is that is there a
strategy behind it?
>> And I'm a longtime listener, so I just I
remember Chris talking about this. so
many years ago. And again, it's
>> yeah, we do advocate for pricing transparency.
transparency.
>> So, I was just curious because honestly,
after listening to some of the initial
parts of this conversation, I
immediately forwarded your website link
to another team member. And like Megan
was saying, I'm going through my own
budget right now as well, looking at,
okay, is this something that I advocate
for just for my team? So, I was just
more curious than anything.
>> I love it. Uh Duke, I've written down
your name. you will be getting a reach
out after this but um uh we we took it
down because we are working on it. Uh so
the int intentionality is we are uh
revising our pricing structure.
>> Got it. So is the intent once you have
some kind of an updated model you'll
you'll publish it on the site for folks. >> Yes.
>> Yes.
>> Yeah. Nice. Nice. So it's under construction.
construction.
>> Under construction. Correct. But yeah,
we're we're big proponents of pricing
transparency and it just goes back to
the um kind of the point that I made in
in the demand pillar section around
removing friction from the buying
process, right? And um under giving
people all the information that they
need um so that when they're coming in
and saying, "Hey, I want to have a sales
conversation." um they've almost gone
through, you know, a majority of
qualification almost on their own by
understanding who you serve, what you
offer, how much it costs, you know, the
outcomes you can provide. So, uh for
those that are here, you can look in the
chat, but um Elaine is saying, "I'm
curious, do enterprise companies plan
their strategies around something like
brand demand expand?" Uh maybe that's a
silly question, but I'd love to
understand if that's actually how it
works asking this because it's mentioned
earlier that there's no budget for
allocated for expand. And so it's a
great question. So typically what I see
um and the majority of Refined Labs
customers are what I would classify as
like mid-market and enterprise
companies. So typically what we see from
a budget perspective is there's
typically budget allocated for demand
and brand. Um those are typically line
items. Again usually what we see is that
demand is almost overfunded and that
brand is underfunded. Now when we think
about the expand pillar, I think some of
the line items that might exist under
the expand pillar um are things probably
related to essentially product or
customer success. And so it's not that
there's sort of nothing there, but what
I would say is it's uh budgeted as
almost like um cost of goods sold and
not a growth investment. people are not
thinking about it that way and even the
handful of strategies that G went over
today in terms of uh references,
referrals, job changes, there's no
intentionality really behind that or
especially for these larger companies
like how are you actually marketing like
you have tens of thousands of customers
or you have hundreds of thousands of
customers like that's a huge audience
and you can be marketing to them just
like you market to your prospective
customers And so, um, typically what we
see is, um, what we're calling expand as
a growth pillar is not explicitly
budgeted for as a growth motion. And
there could be some line items that are
representing, you know, um, account
management or account expansion. Um, but
it's typically looked at as a cost
center versus a growth investment. Um,
and again, even if it is in the budget
as a cost center, it's typically
underfunded of what I think it it
deserves. Um, and I think it just
becomes I think it's really just a lack
of connecting the dots around how these
can have an impact. And what I would say
is if you think about like 2020 to 2024,
the reality is for most companies, net
new logo acquisition was the most
important thing. And really everything
else was kind of put to the side or
ignored. But we're moving into a new
world right now in a new era and we're
already beginning to see how the erosion
of your customer base in you know in
churn um you know a lack of flat NR or
declining NRR has really serious
business implications and so we're we're
at this juncture now where people are
starting to see this as a real problem
and this is why we are talking about
this because there's is actually
something that companies can do and they
can start to do things differently than
how they've done things before and I
think this is a good thing. Obviously
net new logo acquisition is super
important and it will continue to be
important but these other pillars are
just as important as well. And so my I
think for G and I I think the hope is if
we can just talk about things, educate
people, um give them a road map of how
to think about moving from where they
are today to the next phase of building
their growth engine that we can help
more and more companies move in this
direction. G, what would you add?
>> Yeah, I I think you're exactly right
about that. What I would add is and this
is where it goes back to budgeting,
right? there needs to be a budget for
expand and it's really thinking about if
your only focus or your primary focus is
on adding net new pipeline, it's
constant hamster wheel because you're
not focused on the fallout and so you
not only have to grow if you need to
grow 15% but you're losing 10%. Like
you've got to make up that 10% and then
get to the 15% growth. Um that is very
expensive. That is what causes burnout.
that is what will give you and impact
your brand reputation of potentially not
meeting ICP needs. So again, really
focus in on this expansion motion,
really focus in on your growth through
your customers is inherently going to
help your growth rate on demand grow
because of that word of mouth, because
of that success, because of how it
strengthens the brand.
>> Yeah, 100%. Well said.
Um, any other questions before we wrap up?
up?
This is when I need my Jeopardy music playing.
All right. Well, we'll give it a another
second or two for some questions. See if
another one pops up. And G, you can
start preparing your your closing
remarks. Oh, Duke, come on. Come on.
Come on up. Just
>> one more if that's okay. What's your
best advice to create better sales and
I love this question. Um my favorite
favorite favorite activity um we did
this at air call. Um Maline Dup pre
helped um orchestrate this session. Um
we had
first team alignment um and we didn't do
this at the seauite we did it at um my
team did this right so again I shared
with you we were SDRBDR all the way
through customer success I had my VPs
and director level we all got in a
meeting and we talked about the customer
journey we talked about where there was
fallout we talked about really thinking
about where we could catch that fallout
and create improvement plans and we had
everyone build it together all of the
different department heads so that they
had to think about the impact of bum
MQLs or you know closing deals that
weren't within the ICP and how that
impacts the plus one that next team. So
really aligning everyone on the outcome
which is strong NRR right and whatever
that number might be your goals are and
building that program together really
understanding how would we rate
ourselves how would our customers rate
us within each of these segments of the
customer journey where is their fallout
and what can we do to improve that so
it's getting everyone to think about
this holistically the second tip and I
don't know if you can if you can do this
um something that I did was I put a
bonus in place so that we were looking
at the total growth number. So my goal
was, you know, ARR, right, and NRR. Um,
and so it was, you know, h putting a
bonus in place so that your BDR manager
is thinking all the way through customer
success. Uh, and and that way, you know,
have whatever that total, you know,
whether it's a a global number or a a,
you know, P&L number for a certain
geography, having them targeted on that
to make them think, you know, a few
steps ahead.
I love that. That's a great exercise. I
was going to just add I think um shared
goals and incentives. I think that a lot
of the um misalignment that happens um
can be solved at the leadership level
with appropriate goal setting and
incentives, but getting everyone in the
room and rallied around the customer is
how you're going to get like the boots
on the ground really invested, I think,
in that. I love love that
recommendation, Gianna.
>> Awesome. Thank you both.
>> Yeah, great questions, Duke. You were
>> Um, all right. I think, uh, great event.
We're gonna have to do this again
sometime. Um, so wonderful to have you.
Um, and as we're wrapping things up.
Okay. So, if I had to say, you know,
what were some of the top, you know, top
three takeaways from this conversation
that you just kind of want to reinforce
for everyone before we wrap up?
I focus on expand. That's what's going
to drive the other two. Strengthen the
other two pillars. I would end with that.
that.
>> I love that. So that's one, two, and
three. Focus on expand.
>> That's right. That's all you get from me.
me.
>> I love it. I love it. Well, it was
awesome to see everyone. Uh we'll be
publishing this to the podcast. Uh so
check out Stacking Growth. Um thanks to
Gianna for being here with me and we
will catch you next month which are with
at our next event. Good to see everyone.
Thanks for the great questions, Duke.
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